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Family values win again

If you haven’t looked at our website today, be sure to check this out. The Register of Wills in the county tried to run her office as her own fiefdom and denied a marriage license to an American woman and a Mexican man, despite the fact that the couple produced proper identification.

Omar Jadwat of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project:

Marriage is a fundamental right under the Constitution, not something that can be held hostage to an immigration policy agenda.

The man doesn’t have a green card, and isn’t a legal citizen of this country, yet he wasn’t deported or arrested? Why?

This is insane, the man is a criminal and should be treated as one! Let them get married and they can spend their honeymoon in HIS country! I’m so sick of this country’s laws not being enforced! If we don’t enforce one law, then why enforce the rest? Let everyone murder, rape and pillage all they wish.

Lou Barletta’s bigotry has become a contagious disease with Luzerne County’s registrar of wills having caught it too. When will folks like Barletta, the registrar, and our friend “anonymous” learn that being different is not a crime.

Keanus, next time read my words before you make a reference towards them. I never said it was a crime to be different. I said it was a crime, and it is a crime, to be in this country without going through the legal process. If this man is here without a green card, and is not a citizen, he is indeed a criminal!

I disagree! Being up in arms about economic migrants is the only remaining socially acceptable outlet for bigotry and racism. After more than a few interchanges on this site and others, that is readily apparent. Ranting and raving about criminals is just a cloke to hide small minded prejudice behind.

This is none of the “Register of Wills” business… she is just another racist busy-body who should do her job and shut up.

Anonymous, I read your comment and stand by mine. Neither Mayor Barletta’s rationale for his ordinance nor your knee jerk reaction to those who differ can stand the light of day. Barletta claimed that Hazleton was going down hill fast, costing the city lost tax revenue, excess welfare, excessive and violent crime and assorted other ills.

But a quick review of statistics supplied by Hazleton’s own government, including Barletta’s police department, refuted his arguments. Since 2000 somewhere between 7000 and 10000 Hispanics have settled in Hazleton, increasing the population from 23,000 to over 30,000. The city’s budget has gone from $1.4 million in red ink to a surplus. Tax revenues are way up. The city’s hospital (for which the city bears no cost) has gone from losing money to a $4 million surplus. Of the 8500 crimes reported since 2001, only 20 involved an undocumented immigrant. Of those crimes 428 were “violent” and only five involved an undocumented immigrant. And interestingly the crime rate as a whole has declined with the influx of Hispanics. In Barletta’s reasoning lies a transparent attempt to rid Hazleton of people who differ. In that we’re a nation of immigrants, that’s truly sad.

Keanus, again, this doesn’t change the fact that this man is not here legally. I don’t argue the statistics you’ve put forth, nor the impact negative or positive. My arguement is simply that this man is a criminal because he didn’t go through the legal process of becoming a legal US citizen. No one can possibly debate the fact that he is a criminal, because it is indeed fact.

Now, to those who go through the legal process, fantastic! Welcome to the USA, enjoy our benefits, our jobs, our country.

I stand by what I said also. The whole immigration brouhaha is fed by and sustained by racists, bigots and xenophobes.

If the “illegal” immigrants were the same color, and spoke the same language as the majority population, they would not even be noticed.

The “illegality” of their presence is just a moralistic, self-righteous pretext for their bigotry.

This self-righteous anger also has the effect of standing in the way of coming up with workable laws and policies that acknowledge the economic and geo-political realities of the world we actually live in.

Now, Anon, that might not be you. Maybe you are not a bigot. If so, you need to condemn bigots like this Stankovic for what they are. If you don’t, I can only assume…

Andy, Thank you for your straight-forward clarification of the law. I know that as a spokesperson for the ACLU you are very careful and exact about such matters.

An ironic aspect to this is that if the immigration regulations WERE part of the criminal code, economic migrants would be entitled to FULL procedural protection under the constitution! That would really make those who call them “criminals” howl!

The number of hate groups in America has risen by 40 percent since 2000. Hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis are increasingly targeting Hispanics.

“All you’ve got to do is put the insides in and the powder,” klansman Daniel Schertz can be heard telling an undercover agent. Schertz was later arrested for selling five pipe bombs that agents watched him make. He allegedly told an agent that he hoped the bombs would be used to blow up a bus full of Latinos.